Stroke Symptoms and Treatment (cont.)

Benjamin Wedro, MD, FACEP, FAAEM

Dr. Ben Wedro practices emergency medicine at Gundersen Clinic, a regional trauma center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His background includes undergraduate and medical studies at the University of Alberta, a Family Practice internship at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and residency training in Emergency Medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

Charles Patrick Davis, MD, PhD

Dr. Charles "Pat" Davis, MD, PhD, is a board certified Emergency Medicine doctor who currently practices as a consultant and staff member for hospitals. He has a PhD in Microbiology (UT at Austin), and the MD (Univ. Texas Medical Branch, Galveston). He is a Clinical Professor (retired) in the Division of Emergency Medicine, UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, and has been the Chief of Emergency Medicine at UT Medical Branch and at UTHSCSA with over 250 publications.

What are the warning signs of a stroke?

There may be no warning signs of a stroke until it occurs. It is why high blood pressure, one of the risk factors for stroke, is called the silent killer.

Some patients may experience transient ischemic attack (TIA) that can be thought of as a stroke that has resolved itself. The symptoms may be mild or dramatic and can mimic a stroke with weakness, numbness, facial droop, and speech difficulties, but these symptoms may only last few minutes. TIAs should not be ignored since they may offer an opportunity to look for potentially reversible or controllable causes of stroke. As well, there is no guarantee that the symptoms of stroke will resolve on their own. For that reason, a TIA should be considered an emergency and medical care should be accessed immediately.

Amaurosis fugax describes the temporary loss of vision in one eye that occurs because of an embolus of blood clot or debris to the artery that supplies the eye. While it only involves vision, this situation should be considered a type of TIA.